Customizing the Consoles customizing-the-consoles
AEM provides various mechanisms to enable you to customize the consoles (and the page authoring functionality) of your authoring instance.
-
Clientlibs
Clientlibs let you extend the default implementation to realize new functionality, while reusing the standard functions, objects, and methods. When customizing, you can create your own clientlib under/apps.
For example, it can hold the code required for your custom component. -
Overlays
Overlays are based on node definitions and let you overlay the standard functionality (in/libs
) with your own customized functionality (in/apps
). When creating an overlay a 1:1 copy of the original is not required, as the sling resource merger allows for inheritance.
These can be used in many ways to extend your AEM consoles. A small selection are covered below (at a high level).
- Using and creating clientlibs.
- Using and creating overlays.
- Granite
/libs
path./libs
is overwritten the next time you upgrade your instance (and may well be overwritten when you apply either a hotfix or feature pack).-
Recreate the required item (that is, as it exists in
/libs
) under/apps
-
Make any changes within
/apps
For example, the following location within the /libs
structure can be overlaid:
-
consoles (any consoles based on Granite UI pages); for example:
/libs/wcm/core/content
Customizing the Default View for a Console customizing-the-default-view-for-a-console
You can customize the default view (column, card, list) for a console:
-
You can reorder the views by overlaying the required entry from under:
/libs/wcm/core/content/sites/jcr:content/views
The first entry will be the default.
The nodes available correlate to the view options available:
column
card
list
-
For example, in a overlay for list:
/apps/wcm/core/content/sites/jcr:content/views/list
Define the following property:
- Name:
sling:orderBefore
- Type:
String
- Value:
column
- Name:
Add New Action to the Toolbar add-new-action-to-the-toolbar
-
You can build your own components and include the corresponding client libraries for custom actions. For example, a Promote to Twitter action at:
/apps/wcm/core/clientlibs/sites/js/twitter.js
This can then be connected to a toolbar item on your console:
/apps/<yourProject>/admin/ext/launches
For example, in selection mode:
content/jcr:content/body/content/header/items/selection/items/twitter
Restrict a Toolbar Action to a specific Group restrict-a-toolbar-action-to-a-specific-group
-
You can use a custom rendering condition to overlay the standard action and impose specific conditions that must be fulfilled before it is rendered.
For example, create a component to control the renderconditions according to group:
/apps/myapp/components/renderconditions/group
-
To apply these to the Create Site action on the Sites console:
/libs/wcm/core/content/sites
Create the overlay:
/apps/wcm/core/content/sites
-
Then add the rendercondition for the action:
jcr:content/body/content/header/items/default/items/create/items/createsite/rendercondition
Using properties on this node you can define the
groups
allowed to perform the specific action; for example,administrators
Customizing Columns in the List View customizing-columns-in-the-list-view
cq/gui/components/siteadmin/admin/listview/columns/analyticscolumnrenderer
in /apps
.To customize the columns in the list view:
-
Overlay the list of available columns.
-
On the node:
code language-none /apps/wcm/core/content/common/availablecolumns
-
Add your new columns - or remove existing ones.
See Using Overlays (and the Sling Resource Merger) for more information.
-
-
Optionally:
- If you want to plug additional data, you need to write a PageInforProvider with a
pageInfoProviderType
property.
For example, see the class/bundle attached (from GitHub) below.
- If you want to plug additional data, you need to write a PageInforProvider with a
-
You can now select the column in the column configurator of list view.
Filtering Resources filtering-resources
When using a console, a common use case is when the user must select from resources (for example, pages, components, assets, and so on). This can take the form of a list for example, from which the author must choose an item.
To keep the list to a reasonable size and also relevant to the use case, a filter can be implemented in the form of a custom predicate. See this article for details.